EghtySx was saying
>That's about what I do. For the barrel I like to
> scrub with brass brushes and then use a coupla
> hundred patches (seems like that many sometimes)
I've felt that way too as far as the coupla hundred patches, and then I read a tip in one of the gunrags that seemed authoritative that sort of cut down the size of the dirty patch pile:
1. Run a wet patch through the bore and let it soak while you clean the rest of the gun. By "wet" I mean BreakFree.
2. Run 2 more wet patches through.
3. Run a wet bronze bore brush through 10 times.
4. Run another wet patch through.
5. Run 3 wet patches through, scrubbing back and forth.
6. Run a dry patch through. If it's clean, you're done. If it's dirty repeat 2 through 6.
Usually, the dry patch comes out pretty clean, but I usually do the process twice. I baby my guns, and I like them clean, but I DON'T like to get overly obsessive with cleaning the bore. Even though bronze brushes and patches are softer than steel, some wear does take place, and I feel that barrels can be damaged as much by overly agressive cleaning as by too little.
Marty